Century Media Files Lawsuit Against Illegal Downloaders

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Metal record label, Century Media Records is filing a lawsuit against over 7,000 illegal downloaders.

The lawsuit will affect those who allegedly used the BitTorrent file-sharing site to download Lacuna Coil's Dark Adrenaline (with 3,136 defendants) and Iced Earth's Dystopia (with 4,327 defendants).

All defendants are named as "John Doe" and identified only by IP addresses. Soon a court will decide if the label can subpoena different Internet service providers to obtain names of the alleged infringers. If that is granted and John Does don't want to engage in a legal battle, they could settle out of court for a few thousand dollars. If they go to court, it's estimated they could pay "statutory damages of up to $150,000 per defendant."

A Hackensack, New Jersey attorney, Jay. R McDaniel is representing the London-based company Century Media Ltd. McDaniel told NorthJersey.com, "What’s critical to these cases, and what many people don’t understand, is that it’s the distribution that is the evil influence."

Iced Earth guitarist Jon Schaffer wrote on his Facebook page about the suit saying, "I felt it was important to clarify that we had no knowledge of this motion and were, sadly, not asked permission."

Schaffer said he understood the music industry is changing and because of that his band has embraced legal streaming services such as Spotify. However, he says he would not have supported such lawsuit saying, "We feel this is a misguided effort and want to make sure our fans know we would have not given our consent would we have been asked."

There is no official comment as of yet from Century Media other than the American offices say they knew nothing about the suit.